Is Death The End?

Is Death the End Being a Statement of Jfcfe Arguments for Immor tality a Justification, ffo m the Standpoint of Modern Scientific and Philosophic Thought, of the Immortal Hope and a Consider ation of the Conditions of Immortality and Their Relation to the Facts and Problems of Present Human Existence By John Haynes Holmes Minister of the Church of the Messiah, New York uthor of The ftevolutiomty FWJQC OJQ of the Modem Church, and Divorce, etc. G, P. Putnams Sons New York and London tjfoe fmfcfcetfoocfter COPYRIGHT, 1915 BY JOHN HAYNES HOLMES tro THE RADIANT MEMORY OF ROBERT COLLYER MY HONOURED COLLEAGUE, BENIGNANT FRIEND, BELOVED FATHER IN THE SPIRIT While I must say with the great apostle, It doth not yet appear what we shall foe I hold as well to the faith that . . . I shall pass out of one room in the many mansions into another, and what treasure in the heavens was mine here, will be mine there, while that which is to come will not seem so much another life as the ripeness and perfecting of this life that now is. PREFACE IN an age when religion has become intensely practical, and interest in the certainties of this present life has superseded interest in the proba bilities or possibilities of the life to come, it is perhaps necessary to justify this treatise upon the question, Is death the end My reasons for writing it are definite and I trust not wholly anachronistic. First of all, I must make the personal confession that, from my earliest years, I have been interested in philosophical and theological speculations of every kind, Furthermore, I have ever found the most fascinating of all such speculations that per taining to the idea of survival after death. For years I have studiedand meditated upon this problem, and at last I have come to the point where I desire to express my thoughts and convic tions. Hence this book Secondly, I must make another confession to the effect that I feel within myself an intense desire to VI Preface live beyond the temporal bounds of present exist ence. So far as I can determine, this desire has its origin in no ignoble pride in my own personality, for I am conscious of no mean ambition to have that personality as such perpetuated. It comes from no instinctive reaction from a fear of the end, for I think I could receive a proof of extinction with equanimity, although with disappointment. It certainly springs from no yearning for the resumption of personal relations which have been interrupted by death, for no one of those nearest and dearest to me, either friend or kinsman, has yet passed into the unknown. I want to live on and on, simply because I am sure that within a narrow span of seventy or eighty years I never can learn all I want to learn, do all I want to do, or love all I want to love. I want to survive after death, for prac tically the same reason that I want to awake tomorrow morning after tonight s slumber This life, like this day, is too short for the fulfilment of my purposes. I want to live on, because I want to work on, forever Such is my desire. But what chance is there that this desire will be realised Here te, for me at least, a very practical question And it is the endeavour to answer this question which in part explains this book, The book, however, is intended more for others than for myself else while it might have been written, it would never have sought a publisher, That there is wide-spread indifferencetoday to this Preface vii whole problem of immortality, is, as Dr. William Osier has convincingly testified, a matter of com mon observation. 1 Perhaps never before, in the history of human thought, has indifference been so general. And yet I doubt if it is quite so universally characteristic of the modern mind as we are sometimes led to believe. Dr. Osier bases his testimony on his experience at the bedsides of the dying. I could match this by testimony to the contrary based on my experience at the grave sides of the dead...